President's Report 2006 | Research

Let Me Burn Like This: Prayers from the Ashes

By Wade Kearley

Wade Kearley

Let Me Burn Like This examines how relationships are challenged and betrayed by the passage of time; the sane and not-so-sane behaviours we develop to cope with these betrayals; and how, by discovering our own potential, we come to terms with loss and learn to accept those forces beyond our control.

Said John Steffler of this collection: "Over and over, at least in imagination, (Mr. Kearley) crosses safe limits and falls, and the wreckage and pain he experiences seem to remind him that it’s good to be alive and intact, able to house himself, however briefly, in a poem."

Wade Kearley is a communications co-ordinator with the Department of Alumni Affairs and Development. His previous titles include another collection of poetry, Drawing on Water, and The People’s Road, his memory of walking across the Newfoundland along the old rail line.

Let Me Burn Like This is published by Killick Press in St. John’s and is available in the University Bookstore.

Lunar lament
The moon eclipsed
red through the skylight,
the clouds racing and the house
stands solid as the wind
rattles and I slouch
back to my dark bed.
There are four of us alone
in this house tonight.
Strangers, brief shadows,
sliding obliquely
across each other’s lives
when the brightness returns.

[Image of Book Cover]